


Close the Gates

by breathtaken



Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: Canon Era, Episode: s01e09 Knight Takes Queen, Fix-It, Gen, Polyamory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-07
Updated: 2014-04-07
Packaged: 2018-01-18 12:36:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,279
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1428772
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/breathtaken/pseuds/breathtaken
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I've been thinking about what you said, and you were right," he says in a rush, needing to tell her, needing to tell someone who knows him. "I've been fooling myself all these years. There have been – a lot of women, and I told myself that I could only have been happy with you, but –"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Close the Gates

**Author's Note:**

> An alternate ending to Episode 1x09, where Isabelle survives the attack on the convent. Because if there was ever an unnecessary fridging of a love interest, it was that one.

As the small detachment of Musketeers prepare to finally leave the convent it is already late afternoon, the sun dropped down in the sky until its beams break dappled through the treetops. Athos and Tréville are at the head, saying a few last words to the Mother Superior, flanked by the five of them who remain.

Serge's body lies under a fresh mound of earth in the chapel's burial ground, the words of the eulogy still ringing in Aramis' ears.

He doesn't know what they'll do with the rest of the bodies, nor does he want to. While he can't exactly see the sisters having them thrown to the crows, they are traitors to the crown who don't deserve to lie alongside one of his own.

He scans the courtyard restlessly, as if still anticipating danger; and it's only when he sees her that he realises he's been seeking her out. She stands with a group of her sisters, watching him with that steady gaze that's still familiar even after all this time.

She drops her eyes after a moment, but not before she's seen his wordless request; and as he checks his tack in the stables a few minutes later, he isn't surprised to hear the approaching footsteps that he knows instinctively belong to her rather than the Queen.

As he tightens the buckles under his saddle, she strokes Yvain's muzzle, and the beast blows through his nose in pleasure. Isabelle had always had a way with animals, Aramis remembers; it was one of the first things he'd loved about her.

"We had some left," she says as he finishes up and turns towards her, sees she's proffering a familiar glass bottle. "I can't imagine you have time to brew your own."

"I always mean to," he replies, the acknowledgement that it's not the life he's chosen passing unsaid between them. "Thank you, Is–" he checks himself just in time – "Sister Hélène."

"God be with you," she replies, starting to turn away just as he puts his hand on her arm, suddenly unable to bear the idea of letting her go just yet.

"I've been thinking about what you said, and you were right," he says in a rush, needing to tell her, needing to tell _someone_ who knows him. "I've been fooling myself all these years. There have been – a lot of women, and I told myself that I could only have been happy with you, but –"

The flood of words dries up as he takes in her expression; a patient kindness that's somehow impersonal, that hurts more than any censure ever could.

"Aramis."

"That's not what you called me," he shoots back, unable to help himself; still clinging to the last remnants of the dream he's nurtured in his breast for so many years.

Him and her, together in some quiet parish: growing vegetables and rearing livestock, just an ideal of their two smiling faces. Nothing more.

His son would almost be a man now.

"No, but it's who you are now," she replies; and this time when she turns away, he doesn't move to stop her.

* * *

He tries not to feel the Queen's body against him as he rides. It's a losing battle.

She is warm and familiar where she slots between his legs, and he wants to cling to her and bury his face in her hair until he feels loved again.

He doesn't know if he should rebuke himself for that too, but he can't bring himself to regret anything he's felt or done.

They ride hard, or as hard as One-Eyed Florien and Tréville with his broken arm can manage, and Aramis tries to divorce his mind from his senses, tries not to think of her mercy and quiet strength and all the reasons he's in love with her. He tries to keep silent, for his own sake at first; and when the words push against his lips until he can no more hold them back than he could the ocean, he forces himself to wait until they're on the road again, the noise of twenty-eight horseshoes thundering steadily against cobblestones blocking out the sound of his voice to anyone who might listen in.

"Your Majesty. Anne," he says urgently, under his breath. "I will come to your chamber whenever you desire, but I must warn you now that I cannot be faithful, it is not in my nature. I –"

"Monsieur Aramis, please," she interrupts, no louder than he but in a voice that commands. A royal voice.

"This was an extraordinary time," his queen continues, "in which extraordinary things may happen. And now we are returning to our ordinary lives. We _must_ return."

He's speechless for a second. Whatever he expected, it wasn't this.

She turns to meet his eyes then, and her expression softens, the royal mask falling away, until he sees a glimpse of the woman he made love to for just a second, before she straightens her spine and becomes not a woman but a queen once more. "I will be forever grateful to you for your devotion in this time of great need."

"Of course, your Majesty," Aramis replies in a flat voice, feeling suddenly cut adrift. He had hoped – foolishly, but he did.

He's a fool not to have seen what has been so clear to her.

They don't speak again, and she grips the pommel of his saddle as tightly as he grips his own reins, swallowing every protest that rises in his throat, every desperate entreaty. She's right, he knows that in his mind if not his heart; she is his sovereign, and he will obey.

All these years he thought he knew himself, and he was wrong.

His eye lights on Porthos, riding sure and steady on his left, and he wants nothing more in this moment than to tell him everything. Porthos would understand, if anyone would. All the women, who he loved, _truly_ loved, but had never been able to make a life with.

All the men, too; who he loved no less, even though he always stood to gain so little by it. Even when he's most desperate and goes down to the docks of a night, sitting and watching his expression in the black water and waiting for the touch of a heavy hand on his shoulder, he would love those men too if he knew anything of them other than their callused touch, the weight of their cocks, their grunts as they come.

It's never really been about Isabelle, only him: he's broken somehow, loving too much but never contented, and they always know there's someone new just round the corner to make him fall all over again. The true love, the family he should have had lost to him not by an accident of fate, but by his own restlessness and indiscriminate desires.

Sometimes he feels like a flame, only wanting to warm but unable to help consuming everyone he touches, until his hope turns to ash beneath his fingertips.

Would he be a better man, if he could close his heart the way Athos closed those convent gates?

The way Athos closes his own heart's gates against intruders?

No – he is not Athos, nor would he wish to be. Better to love everyone he can and to lose them again, to get on his knees in the chapel or at the dockside and ask God or man to make it different this time. Telling himself it _will_ be, deluding himself just enough to get through the cold nights alone, until someone new steps through the gates of his heart and he can lose himself once again.


End file.
